Alien Earth (37 page)

The shuttle’s beacon was still screaming hopefully. In some ways it reminded her of the strange signals she had heard when she was negotiating her descent through the Earth’s atmosphere. She still could not place the familiarity of the transmission, but something about the emergency beacon reminded her of it; perhaps the way it called for help without forming thoughts.

[Coming!] She called to it in Mom’s voice, which of course it could not hear or respond to. [I’ll be right there.]

The same foolish thought
kept rattling through Raef’s head. “I never got to go to Disneyland, but it doesn’t matter anymore.” He giggled wildly, then wiped his bruised hand over his face again. Wet. Was he still crying? He supposed so. He sat up ponderously, slowly drew his tunic off over his head. He wiped his eyes with it, then blew his nose on it. Slimy. Stupid things were hardly absorbent at all.

He swung his legs carefully over the side of the lounger, then leaned on it as he maneuvered himself into a standing position. His back was cramped from being buckled into the small chair for so long. And gravity, constant gravity, was a thing he hadn’t reckoned with. This wasn’t a fuge he could get out of when he was tired. He let go of the lounger, tried a cautious step. Not too bad. He hoped to God he wouldn’t have to go far to make this rescue, though. He shuffled like an old man as he made his way to the disposal chute and shoved the tunic down it. He tugged out a clean set of clothes, donned the tunic.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, back to the lounger and sit down. And there it was, right in the monitor. Earth, blessed,
beautiful Earth. He looked at it, and started shaking again. He wiped his eyes on the trousers he still clutched. Damn.

It had all been too much, too fast. First she’d scared the crap out of him with that descent. Every single instrument had gone up into the red and stayed there. Twice he’d felt sudden pressure drops that quickly stabilized; he suspected at least a couple of bulkheads had blown. He remembered hearing alarms, but whatever the crisis had been, the ship’s automatic systems had handled it. At the time he hadn’t been able to worry about it; terror had had him firmly in its clutch.

He’d wished he’d been paying more attention to the monitors and spent less time gripping the armrests and clenching his eyes shut. All he knew was that when the vibration had eased, he’d opened his eyes and looked out upon home.

Home.

She was there, she was real, she
wasn’t
dead. Coming closer and closer, like the world’s longest approach to an airport runway, it had been the sweetest, wildest ride of his life. At first he had told himself it couldn’t be true, that the patches of color on the monitors would resolve eventually to poisoned swaths of bare soil or stone.

But they hadn’t.

It wasn’t the Earth he had known, that was true. Gone were the geometric shapes of tilled and planted and fallow fields in their varying shades of green. No freeways nor highways nor winding country roads sliced through the land; no cities loomed high on the horizons, no small towns nestled beside the rivers. Of the works of man, no sign remained.

And it was a different nature at work that he saw as well. Life was less lush. As Evangeline took him in, as her velocity slowed and she lost altitude, it was a sterner and more pragmatic ecology that he glimpsed. Prairie, he’d tried to tell himself at first. That’s why it looks so sparsely planted. This was prairie, arid and harsh, swept by winds. Somewhere, soon, they’d come to a green river valley, or forested foothills, or …

But they hadn’t. No wide grasslands, and the river they crossed supported only a narrow strip of green on either side of it. The hillsides he saw were sere, each twisted tree a monumental triumph that stood alone. There were belts of brush
land, and then stretches of land covered with plants that weren’t grasses, something he had never seen before, some kind of plant life that hugged the earth in a miserly grip. No herds of buffalo, not even cattle gone wild, no wild horses. He sighted one pack of animals, but their shapes were unfamiliar to him; predators or prey, hooved or clawed, he could not tell, only that they ran very well, bellies close to the earth.

It should have saddened him to see the depletion of species. So little had survived, and whatever would come forth from the infinite variety of nature to fill in the ranks was slow in stepping forward. Instead of mourning, he had sat in the lounger and grinned foolishly as he wept. He had always thought of himself as the sole survivor, the last of Earth’s true children to exist. The misshapen creatures who called themselves Humans now, with a capital H, they were not of Earth. They were descended of those who’d surrendered the planet, those who’d cut and run. As I did, he admitted, as I would have if they’d let me. But they didn’t, and here I am, I’m home, and maybe it’s not the Garden of Eden, maybe it’s more like the plains of Purgatory, but it’s home.

The little white shuttle looked like an abandoned Lego model, blinking so white against the browns and yellows and grey-greens that surrounded it. As they drew closer he was amazed at how strange and yet familiar it seemed. This one regular shape, machined by Human hands, with precisely matching angles, bilateral symmetry, that was what his old biology teacher had meant by that phrase. Thank you, Evangeline, I understand that now, too. He stared at it for a long time. Last work of Human hands to stand failed on the Earth’s surface. Evangeline had brought it down very well, very neatly. It looked as if a hand had gently set it down there rather than a Beast directly signaling onboard computers and servo-motors. He wished he could hail it, could know right now if John and Connie had survived the landing. But that would have taken Tug and Evangeline cooperating, and he’d given up on that. He wished even more desperately that there were some way to communicate directly with Evangeline. Perhaps if this John had survived, he might be able to help Raef figure out a way.

Some little time passed before he realized the shuttle
was growing no larger. Evangeline was motionless, hovering. He understood this meant they had arrived, and it was now time for him to do his part. His view of the shuttle changed as Evangeline lowered herself closer and closer to the Earth. She had explained this would be the most difficult part for her; she had to touch the gondola to the Earth, but not crush it, so Raef could safely disembark. “You’ve left me a hell of a walk, old girl,” Raef observed, but could make sense of why she didn’t want to get too close to the shuttle. It would be pretty pathetic if the rescue party crushed those to be rescued.

He stood and considered for a second. He was returning to Earth just as he had left her, empty-handed, with only the clothes on his back. Appropriate. The prodigal son.

There he was!
She thought she’d felt him leave, the brief vibration of a portal opening and then closing again. Her sensory cells examined him. Temperature normal, but pulse and respiration were high. She sensed his body dispersing more heat and moisture than usual and it briefly concerned her. Then, oh, of course, he was making more effort than usual, working against the gravity of this planet. That would account for it. She sampled his exhalations, identified the soluble molecules his body gave off, and memorized the impact on her sensory cells. Raef, and now she could give him a shape and mass and velocity, and understood what he would have called his scent. Amazing creature. Raef. So tiny, and yet his pretenses were so vast they could immerse her. She tracked him as he labored along in her shadow, headed directly for the shuttle. She could hardly wait for the glorious rescue to commence.

S
UN ON HER SHOULDERS
and the top of her head pressed her on toward the water. Cool water ahead, and the packed earth trail beneath her feet was a comfort to her bare soles. She moved through the day like a filter, straining it all through her mind. Ahead, light bouncing silver off moving water, cool water, she smelled it, rich with crisp water plants, and the muttering of the floating birds filling her ears as they paddled in the tall thick grasses that grew in the water along the riverbank.

Silent, silent she came among them now, her feet soundless on the path her daily treks here had created. Yes, a path, a strip devoid of growing things that she walked each day, a change she had wrought in this planet merely by her daily passage. Once she would have been ashamed, would have tried to repair it somehow. Now it seemed a welcome, an assent from this world that she belonged here. See how the taller plants leaned away from it, how the smaller, more flexible ones grew across it uncaring. And see, too, the marks of other feet sharing the easier way she had made, small feet, things with round toes that came in the dimness of evening and left their marks here.

She didn’t pause at the water’s edge, but waded out into the river, feeling the coolness ease her dry feet. The current was sluggish here among the tall grasses, but she felt still the passage of all that water, pouring past her in the path it had
carved for itself. Air moved over the water with the current, cooling and drying the sweat on her skin. She paused, clenching her toes in the river muck beneath her feet, watching sediment swirl up and be carried away by the water. Everything moved and made a place for itself in this world. Everything stepped forward and took what it needed, and it all worked.

So what about John?

She sat down in the cool flow of water and thought about him. A floater bird drifted out of the tall grasses, muttered a rude question at her, and paddled back out of sight. When she made no response and did not move, it drifted back, to be joined shortly by its companion. After a few moments, they went back to their feeding, tipping forward to immerse their heads in the water and then reemerging with their beaks full of dripping greenery. Taking what they needed. She envied how simple it was for them: the plants, the water, the light, and a companion. All they needed within easy reach.

And for her? She supposed she was starting to learn how to do it. She had taken the time and space she had needed for herself. She’d made the path, and this place by the water she’d taken for her own. She cupped cool water up in her hand and drank it, heedless of the drops that ran back down her chin and into the river again.

So what about John?

Was it that different from what he’d told her, so long ago? See what needs doing, and do it, rather than waiting for a command. This would be seeing what she needed to take, and taking it, rather than waiting for an invitation. Didn’t she have a right to it?

She wasn’t sure.

He’d gotten them into this. She tried to recall how angry she’d been when he’d told her about Earth Affirmed, how redly she’d hated him. But all she could think of was how he hid from this world now, how the sun reddened his skin if he stayed out in it too long, of how skinny and lanky he seemed when deprived of the grace of weightlessness. She found herself smiling. But he was so serious, and so passive, sitting there in the shuttle, watching the readouts fail. Something in him had changed lately. His surety was gone, and she missed it. He was the one who had insisted they belonged here, and
now he wouldn’t step out and take his place, not in this world, nor with her.

She sighed heavily, startling the floater birds. They scolded at her briefly, but when she remained still, they went back to feeding.

He watched her by day, she knew, and lay wakeful beside her at night. He knew that she waited. He knew what she wanted. She didn’t understand why he held back from her, from this world. She smiled to herself suddenly. She wouldn’t give in. He’d have to see what needed doing, and do it, without direction from her. In the meantime, she could wait. Longer than he could, she was sure.

“John?”

He opened his eyes and lifted his head, surprised. She could move so softly now, soft as the night that followed day, but still it seemed that he should have heard the door trundle open and closed again. He must have been dozing. Sleeping his life away in the flickering green light of the two remaining monitor screens. What was left of his life, anyway. He stretched lazily, tried to pretend it felt good instead of aching, and then turned to look at her. “Yes?”

She was soaked to the waist, her skin gleaming through wherever the damp fabric clung to her. She was smiling, eyes shining with some wonderful secret. She held out the front of her tunic, laden with something. “I’ve figured it out,” she told him earnestly, proudly.

“What have you got there?” he asked her.

“Listen, first,” she said, coming closer. Her bare feet and ankles were evenly coated with dust and sand, and the tattered cuffs of yesterday’s new trousers were brown with mud. A strand of some waterweed still tangled around one calf. River child, you’ve been playing in the water’s mouth, he thought to himself, and smiled. Sometimes she was so beautiful he could scarcely see her. He was crazy, perhaps, but it was a merciful sort of madness. I’m starving to death and I’ve fallen in love, he thought idly.

“I’m listening,” he told her, and saw her puzzled look at the foolishness in his voice.

“I’ve figured it all out,” she repeated. “It was simple when I thought about it. People used to live on Earth, and
find stuff to eat here. The question was, how to find what was edible for us out of all the stuff that grows here. And I kept thinking there was a really easy answer, if I could just see it. And then it came to me. All we had to do was look at the ones that were like us. I thought it would be the lizard, because he lived on land like us, but no matter how long I watched him, I never saw him eat. So, well, I thought, the floating birds eat all the time, and they’re not so much different from us. And I tried it, and I think it works. Look.”

She came and emptied the apron she had made of her tunic front into his lap, heedless that the still-dripping contents drenched him. He gasped in surprise at the wetness and sat up straight. She ignored it, to poke through the greenery in his lap. He shifted uncomfortably. She ignored it.

“See, they eat this stringy green stuff. There’s lots of it, and it doesn’t taste too bad. And they eat these fat green shoots, but what they like best are these little round black things that stick on them. I think they might be some kind of seed. Try one.” She pulled one free of the fat stem it clung to and handed it to him. Without even thinking to disobey, he put it in his mouth and chewed it. Thin crisp shell and a soft slimy interior. Not much flavor, but not repulsive. He swallowed it. She was watching his face anxiously. “What do you think?”

“It’s not bad,” and when she looked mildly hurt by his lack of enthusiasm, he added, “It reminds me of that custard they make from Juliet petals. How about these?” He picked up one of the fat green shoots the black thing had been on. “Do we eat these, too, or just the black things on them?”

“Well, I ate the whole thing. It was sort of starchy, at first, but as I chewed it, it got sweeter. This stuff, with the little round leaves? It tastes sharp, sour, and, well, almost hot at the same time.” When he sat still, just looking at her, she added, “Well, John, go ahead and eat! I brought this back for you. I ate when I was down at the river, tasting the stuff.”

He paused a moment longer, not hesitating, but watching the anticipation in her face. It seemed wonderful that she had thought of him, and it was still as big a shock as when she had handed him that mug of stim, so long ago. Then he began eating, and she sat down in the mate’s lounger and watched him. It wasn’t bad. The fat shoots were very fibrous on the
outside, but the inner pith was starchy and filling. They made the black crunchy things almost a welcome change in texture. He finished up with the stringy stuff, and then the peppery-leaved one. And Connie watched him eat with a quiet pride in what she had figured out. John leaned back in the lounger, feeling, if not satisfied, at least fuller than he had in several days.

“So, we aren’t going to starve,” he observed to her, and with the announcement realized the full significance of what she’d accomplished. If they weren’t going to starve, they were going to live, and living demanded a more elegant plan than merely getting from day to day. Or did it?

“I want to go down to the beach,” she said suddenly. “I want to see what those wide-winged grey birds eat.”

John grimaced. “It didn’t look very good to me. I was down there one day, and the wide-wings were picking up these things and dropping them on rocks, and then eating what was inside. I found some old ones and looked at them; they stank.”

“Maybe they don’t when they’re fresh,” she pointed out.

“Probably not.” John swung his legs over the edge of the lounger. “Want to go now?”

Connie considered, then shook her head. “We’d better wait, I suppose. Some kind of strange storm is coming up; I think we should stay inside. I know it doesn’t feel heavy like it does before it rains, but there’s an immense cloud on the horizon, and it’s moving this way fast. I watched it for a while; you can see its shadow coming over the plain.”

“Show me,” John requested.

“Okay,” she replied, and as simply as a child might, she took his hand to lead him out of the shuttle.

Raef stood for a moment
,
swaying in the heat and dust and light. For an instant he forgot gravity’s dull drag at his body as every cell in his skin woke up and took notice. Smells, he could not believe how pungent they were. The very dust had a sharp flavor, and the plants seemed to crowd close as his nose met wave after wave of scent: resinous, sweet, peppery. And light, real light, not the carefully muted light of Evangeline’s interior, bled of all harmful wavelengths, but sunlight, full and glorious, as he stepped out from
Evangeline’s immense shadow. He took a dozen more steps, blinking, his eyes tearing. Then he stopped, turned, and looked up and back.

He was still too close. He couldn’t really see her. There was a ridiculous aspect to what he saw from here, the gondola, tiny by comparison to her, resting on the earth, and then Evangeline’s immense bulk appearing to teeter atop it, like an elephant balanced atop a tennis ball.

He took another dozen steps away, turned, and looked back again. But she was taller than the tallest building he had ever seen, and so wide that his eyes had to pan across her bulk. She shone and glittered in the sun, and her sparkling made her bigger. Her body was lighter than mere white could be; she was iridescent, and constantly in motion that caught and shattered light into his eyes. She was incredibly solid one moment, and the next she turned all to flutters of lace and brocade and dangling bead curtains. Exotic as a belly dance, stately as a waltz was her movement. Her flukes or fans or whatever they were moved slowly but constantly, reminding him of an angelfish fluttering its fins to hold its position in an aquarium. Except that angelfish had always seemed delicate and insubstantial to Raef, and those were words that could not apply to Evangeline. She radiated solidity along with the light she reflected, as if someone had sliced off the top of a snowy mountain and given it myriad wings. The big rock candy mountain, Raef thought, and grinned. Independent of any wind, her angel-hair streamers stirred and flowed out suddenly from her like a flume of snow blowing across a mountain peak, or suddenly awakened white flames burning on white crystals. Raef could imagine that they reached for him and then beckoned him on. He grinned, waved both his arms at her, and then trudged away from her toward the shuttle.

The shuttle glinted in the sun, a dirty grey compared to Evangeline’s white. From here, it looked like an abandoned Tonka toy. It was a good hour’s hike away, he estimated, and hoped the flatness of the prairie wasn’t deceiving him. Already he was thinking he should have worn some kind of headgear; he’d never had full sunlight beating down on a nearly shaven skull before. The thin deck slippers he was wearing weren’t going to last, either; he should have taken
the time to punch up some of those hard-foam boots from the supply, but hell, they probably wouldn’t have had them big enough for him anyway. And water, a canteen of water, that’s something he’d probably wish he had before this walk was over.

And then he grinned to himself at the foolishness of it all. He probably wasn’t going to be down here for more than a couple of hours. Head for the shuttle, locate Connie and John, bring them back to Evangeline, and take off. Simple.

He imagined how incredulously happy they were going to be. They probably had been scared to death all this time. He wondered if he’d walk into the shuttle and take them both by surprise (“Now calm down. My name is Raef, and although I look a little different from you, I am a Human. In fact, I’ve been aboard Evangeline with you the whole time, and …”) or if they’d already spotted Evangeline and would come running out to meet him. He wondered if they’d even recognize Evangeline in such an unusual place and configuration. Inflating her gas bladders had definitely changed her profile. World’s largest helium balloon, he thought to himself, and smiled.

Yeah, anyway, they’d be all excited to see him, and together they’d walk back to Evangeline, and then …

And then what?

His heart sank suddenly. This wasn’t some pretense he and Evangeline had created. This was real life, and in real life, things happened you couldn’t undo, and they kept going on from there. You couldn’t keep going back and replaying the feel-good times in real life. You set a chain of events in motion, and then you had to live with what you’d done. Or die. He walked slower, and it wasn’t just gravity dragging at him.

Consequences. He’d take John and Connie back to Evangeline after he’d explained who he was. And what would happen next? Bad things. How could John be captain if Evangeline wasn’t listening and obeying Tug anymore? So John would probably want Evangeline to go back to Tug. Connie would probably see him as some kind of monster, huge and hairy. John could only see him as a threat to his command. So what would they do with Raef? They’d guess he had a disease. They’d know something was wrong with
him. Would they let him go on as he had, hidden away deep inside Evangeline? Probably not. So what would happen next?